


A Game of Mistakes

by kaixo (ballpoint)



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Borussia Dortmund, Europa League, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballpoint/pseuds/kaixo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric is mad about that Dortmund result in the Europa League and wonders why Dele is so cool about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Game of Mistakes

**Author's Note:**

> Written for thesecondhalfhattrick over there in tumblr. I tried with Eric Dier/Dele Alli, but this turned out to be quite gen. In this case, real life is better than fiction.

_Phweet, phweet, phweet!!!!!_

Three short, sharp blasts of the whistle cut through the din; final score 1- 2 to the visitors, the match over. 

In truth, the tie had been over since last last week. Tonight just made it official. 

The Dortmund support of yellow and black jumping and screaming, the boom of the drums making the sky and ground rumble. All of which contributed to a concentrated roar of noise from the visitors’ end, the vibrations so intense, the Emirates down the road might have been shaking. 

With not a _little_ disgust, Eric dragged the back of his hand across his sweat drenched brow, the joyful shouts of the German players around him making him inwardly seethe; seeing from the corner of his eye as the members of Dortmund ran towards their supporters, and cheering _with them_. 

Hand on hip, his other hand still across his face, Eric didn’t see as much as _feel_ Dele’s hand on his shoulder. 

“What a game eh, Diet?” Dele half laughed, and Eric couldn’t even summon a smile at Dele’s purposeful mispronunciation of his name, which came about after his smartphone spell check refused to recognise ‘Dier’ as a word. 

Eric only huffed in response. 

“You know they’re slumming in Europa, yeah?” Dele continued, his voice calm and considered. Once the whistle blew, Dele was nothing like he would be in the thick of games: chock full of trickery, industry, lashings of nutmegs and dollops of temper. 

The noise continued around them unabated, Dortmund supporters singing off key tunes to the clang of drums. Their flags waving in triumph, the yellow a sharp contrast to the darkening of the rapidly entering stands. The field now clearing itself, the rest of the Spurs players, shoulders slumped, their clapping half hearted because there were no supporters to clap for as they beelined to their exits. 

The other players who were rested for this match - Josh, Vorm, Winksy, and Harry now waved on to the field by the conditioning coach. 

“You’re well mugged off.”

“Aren’t you?” Eric spun to face Dele, shrugging Dele’s hand from his shoulder. Dele’s face gleamed with sweat under the stadium lights, his football shirt slung over his shoulder, torso and arms clad in the white long-sleeved under armour thermal. 

Dele rubbed at his nose with both his index and middle fingers, his mouth curved in wry amusement, as if he just got the punchline to a bad joke. “We were outplayed and outclassed. You can’t be _too_ hung up on that, Diet, there’s always the next game.”

Before Eric could respond to _that_ , Harry had already loped towards them, closing the space in quick steps. He clad in navy warm downs, his strides eating up the distance on the field. 

“Sorry lads,” Harry's concern genuine, because he had front seats to the _slaughter_ at the first leg and the damp squib on this one. “I wish-”

 _Yeah,_ Eric thought, half resentful. Pochettino had done the equivalent of sending them out to sea in a leaking ship. Them taking losses on aggregate without the benefit of Kane leading the line with goals at both ends. That wasn’t Harry’s fault though, Eric, knew, and because of that, he swallowed around the anger and disappointment. 

“The gaffer wants to know if both of you lads can do press duties? Toby and Kevin did them last time.” Especially since the England NT lists came out before this match and their names were on it. The English press wanted quotes from _them_ , especially Dele, since he gave good copy.

“Yeah, no problem,” Dele volunteered. “Go and warm down, H. We’ll sort it.”

A nod and an appreciative smile from Harry before he spun around and ran towards the end of the pitch where the rest of the players were going through their stretches with the fitness coach. 

“I forgot about the press choir,” Eric grumbled, feeling annoyed at being annoyed. 

Dele shrugged, but like everything else, he took the press intrusion in relatively elegant stride. Even with his mum going to a national red top and spilling the dramatic details of his background, Dele just rolled with it. 

“It could be worse, Diet.”

“I don’t see how, Dell-boy, I don’t see how.”

***

Before training, and as soon as you stepped foot into Enfield, Mauricio Pochettino had a few steadfast rules. The first one being, you had to greet your teammates with a handshake before anything. The second - and just as important- you had to drop by your injured teammates during their rehabilitation.

“They’re still our teammates, and it’s not enough to _think_ about them,” Pochettino explained in his accented English. “We have to show them that we remember their faces, that we want them back on the grass with us, yes?”

That was how Eric had gotten to know Dele. A _wunderkind_ from the third tier of English football, bought by Spurs in January and reloaned to his old club MK Dons, only to get injured and rehabbed at his new parent club. Eric had been tasked to be Dele’s lookout, and they became fast friends. 

Speaking of fast friends, Eric waved at Jan as he stepped into the weights room. Jan and Clint were doing stretches on yoga mats before their physical therapists came in for the day. 

“Jan,” Eric greeted, hand out for a handshake. Then, “Clint.” 

Clint still shy, with a warm smile, his English wasn’t fluent as yet, with him newly arrived from Ligue 1, and his rehab, when he had to work away from his teammates for an extended time, didn’t help. 

“Eric,” Jan said, and then, because he was as no nonsense as his haircut, he followed with, “So, Dortmund. Last night.”

Eric collapsed into a heap on the mat in between Clint and Jan, to both of his teammates’ amusement. 

“They were a good side, _non_?” Clint offered. Under statement of the bleedin’ year, mate, but Clint had a surprisingly delicate sense of humour. 

“Tore us apart. Their front three are...” Eric broke off. 

“They are a Champions League level team,” Jan pushed himself into a seated position, bracing his body weight on his arms. “We want to play Champions League, so...” His voice trailed off, as he peered at Eric, and Eric frowned, his eyes narrowing into slits. “What?”

“You’re still mad.”

“ _What?_ No.”

Jan, to his credit, didn’t push it. He just said, “Toby told me about Aubameyang, and Reus -”

“It’s one thing to see them on tape, but to play against them-” Eric stared at the ceiling, frustrated. “We’re years away.”

“We need to cut that distance fast,” Jan quipped, “the gaffer is hoping to get there next season.”

Eric pressed his fingers against his eyes, pretending as if he hadn’t heard Jan.

 

***

“Eric,” Sonny sidled up to Eric’s side, his eyes twinkling with humour as the team tromped out on the training ground, mist streaming from their mouths and noses in the chill. “You look different.”

Eric rolled his eyes as he felt Dele’s gust of laughter at the nape of his neck. Although they were smack dab in the middle of March, the sky was as grey and unyielding as it was in January. England might have offered him many things, like his current club and his teammates like Sonny and Dele - now hitching a ride on his back on his walk to their team practice- but a bit of sun wouldn’t have hurt in March at all. 

For all of Ali’s scarecrow build and height, he felt surprisingly heavy, but Eric could more than manage. 

“I have a lump on my back,” Eric said, “Like Quasimodo.”

“Quasimodo?” Sonny repeated, puzzled. 

“Dier’s a mutant,” Dele quipped and Sonny laughed, as he lifted a hand to shield his face from - not the sun, obviously.

Jesús Pérez, Pochettino's assistant, stood on at the edge of the field, checkpad in hand as he noted them coming out, and Eric felt Dele’s weight as Dele slipped off his back. At times, Eric swore he could _feel_ the click as Dele went from joking around and ease to instant focus. On a gust of breath, Eric started his stretches, because they’d have to jog next. 

He hated jogging.

***

“No, no, no, Coco. _Non_!” Nabil exclaimed, crossing and uncrossing his arms in an emphatic gesture, as he glared at Coco. Training now over for the afternoon, Nabs and Coco were engaged in their two touch football competition.

This had been going on since the team trip in Barcelona. 

“Ok, ok, ask Dele. See what he say.”

“It’s Coco’s ball, he had the last two touches,” Dele pointed out, holding the ball between the tips of his fingers, since Nabil kicked it out of play. “Sorry, Nabs, but - Coco wins this one.”

“Again, then, one more.” Nabs said quickly, and Coco only smiled, maddeningly smug, like a man who won all their match ups in a row, because he had. 

“Okay,” Coco rolled his shoulders, hands on hips. “Dele, can you-?”

Dele looked at Josh, sitting on the far side of the field, since Nabs insisted on two judges for the two touch football. Half laughing, Josh waved his assent, his slight frame almost suffocated by the lime green training bib over his training kit. _Sure_

Nabil had a quick touch, and hated to lose. 

Slight as a reed, his oversized beanie flopping with his movements, he seemed more a street dancer than a footballer, but he had skill and power. Nabil hooked Dele’s thrown ball with his instep, flicked it in the air, before he bulleted it towards Coco. 

Out of habit, Eric looked towards the buildings in the distance, but Pochettino made sure there were no clocks about - because he didn’t believe in clock watching. The only persons who had watches to hand on the field were the coaches. Training now over for the day, Sonny and Kevin decided to leave as soon as, not wanting to get drawn into Nabil’s demands for two touch ball, because Nabil was... _obsessive_

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Kevin asked, ever so polite. His English more measured and formal to Sonny’s more flexible take on the language. 

“Not now,” Eric said, looking at the tableau before him. Nabil and Coco shaping and twisting their bodies as they kicked and headed the ball between them, with Josh half sitting, half lying down, calling out the scores. Dele seated in front of Nabil and Coco, one of the official score checkers. 

“We’re thinking of going to the movies, we can text later? Or-” Sonny started, his mouth curved in mischief, as he tugged the sleeves of his jacket over the tips of his fingers. “We can play Mario Kart.” 

_You wind up merchant_ , Eric thought. Everyone saw the video showdown re: Mario Kart between Ali and Eric now posted on the Spurs Youtube channel to world wide amusement - even Pochettino- and he wasn’t given to frivolity. It hadn’t been Eric's finest moment, and it tickled Sonny to no end. But Sonny’s teasing was always good natured, and this was no different. “I’ll take the movie.”

“All right,” Kevin said, “text us, and we’ll set a time, _ja_?”

“Delestroyer!” Sonny yelled, and Deli turned around, waved. “See you later, yeah?”

“Yeah! Text me.”

Greetings exchanged, Sonny and Kevin walked off towards the buildings, speaking to each other in rapid German. Eric watched them for a minute, Kevin’s cautious, quiet air to Sonny’s electric, cheerful demeanour. It seemed odd at first, but they worked. Their little team worked- or he thought they did- Jan might have been right after all. Before his mood changed, he turned away from Kevin and Sonny, and focused on the game in progress. 

 

As one professional player to another, Eric could admit this- Nabil was good. Working with Nabil for a year, Eric could appreciate his talent and abilities, but Coco... Coco was better. In an instant, you could see why the gaffer stepped in at the last minute before Coco had been shipped off to Marseille, and why Spurs ponied up thirty million pounds for his services in the first place. 

Coco killed the ball on his chest, shifted his leg, the hollow _thunk_ as the ball rocketed off his shin in Nabil’s direction. Coco knew how to position his body to create _illusion_ , when you thought his body went one way, the ball another. 

Nabil shifted a leg, almost losing his balance, as he got his foot on the ball, and chipped it over Coco’s head. Coco’s eyes on the ball, before he jumped up to head it - and missed. 

“That’s Coco’s,” Eric said, as he stepped forward, before Dele could speak. He’d caught Dele by surprise, Eric knew, as Dele turned his face upwards, his eyebrow raised, before he smirked.

“Hey, I was about to say that.”

“Snooze, you lose, Dell-boy.”

Nabil sucked the spit from his teeth, more a noise of disgust at himself, rather than Coco. 

“We’re going up to twenty, right?”

“I thought it was ten,” Josh corrected, giving Nabil an expression along the lines of, _You wut, m8?_ , but Nabil was unperturbed, as he worried his bottom lip with his teeth, deep in thought. 

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen,” Dele agreed, “but then we have to go. You sitting down, Dier?” 

Eric did as bid, as he sat on the training ground beside Dele, cross-legged. Eric’s long sleeved training top now shucked off and tied around his waist, clad in a short sleeved training top. Dele tugged at his sleeves to cover his fingers, because he never stopped feeling cold- long sleeves, long training joggers with knee highs underneath... 

“Dell- boy,” Eric said, as they exchanged a simple high five. 

“One day, you gonna have to learn the super secret handshake, like everyone else,” Dele scolded, trying to throw a simple flick of the hand, leaving Eric hanging.

“I can do ‘paper, rock, scissors’?” Eric volunteered, his voice ringing with hope. Dele rolled his eyes, and for a moment, he seemed to be nine instead of nineteen. “Shocking, mate, shocking.”

“I can’t dance, dress or box-” Eric shrugged, the back and forth between them as familiar and comfortable as an old pair of jeans. “According to you, my haircut is tragic.”

“You’re just a big ball of tragic, Eric.” Dele laughed, before the ball whizzed through the space between their faces towards the end of the field. Without missing a beat, Dele called it, as he scrambled to his feet to retrieve the ball. “Seven - two.”

***

Ball now recovered, and both resettled, Coco and Nabil refocused on the match. Eric took the time to observe everyone- Coco’s relative ease at retrieving and besting the ball, and Nabil’s increasing intensity.

“Nabs is losing,” Eric said after a while, as they took in the _thunk_ of the ball, Nabil’s hissed curses, and Coco’s triumphant shout. 

“Yeah, Nabs is taking that L,” Dele agreed. 

“This will run and run.” 

“You know Nabil, he’s a sore loser. Speaking of sore,” Eric’s ears pricked up at this, as he turned to Dele, even though the latter was observing the keen contest before them; both now breaking into spontaneous applause as Nabil blocked a wayward ball with his chest, shooting so quickly towards Coco, the ball ricocheted off Coco’s hip and bounced out of their mutually agreed boundary. 

“Still mad?”

“Aren’t you?” Eric shot back. 

Dele drew his legs towards his torso, and waved to Josh. Josh, who might have been the most chilled lad in the side, waved languidly back, as if he were on a beach in the Caribbean somewhere with a crafty cocktail in hand. Never mind the overcast sky and the chill on the wind, Josh was _fine_.

“At Dortmund?” 

“No,” Eric said after a pause, before he huffed a breath... and turned to face Dele. Close enough to see the wispy curled hairs at the base of his chin, and the faint shadow of hair on his upper lip. 

“Liar.” Dele shot back, and yeah, it was _infuriating_ how well they knew each other at times. It worked well on the field, a sort of telepathy where they needed only to catch each other’s eye before they surgically carved through their opposition. But off the field, the transparency could be annoying like oh... now. 

“Dele-”

“Eric.” 

That did it, Dele’s utterance of _Eric_. Not Diet, not Dier. _Eric_ , his name said in that warm, quiet way you wouldn’t think that Dele had about him at all. Eric lowered his gaze away from Dele’s and shifted it to Josh, who was still away from them. 

“Yeah,” Eric confessed, as he rested his elbows on his knees, “ We could have done better. Three nil away? Two one at home? We want to play in Champions League next season, and after that tie... We could have played better.” 

"We weren't even on the first leg, remember?" Yeah, Eric remembered, Dele had a suspension to sit through, and Eric had been given orders to rest. 

“Still,” Eric made a dismissive gesture, “like you said, we were played off the field, they were a different class, Dele. We want to get into Champions League next year, to play with the Real Madrids, the Bayerns, the Barcelonas- and I don’t mean Audi Cup invitationals either. And-”

“We still have Liverpool to play,” Dele cut in. “The gaffer will make us do triple sessions if he ever overheard us talking about the Champions’ League as if were a sure thing.”

“Don’t sit there and tell me that you aren’t thinking about it.”

“I’m not thinking about it.”

“Look me in the eye and say that.”

Eric found himself at the end of Dele’s stare. Dele had the steely glare down pat, especially now with the lines of his face sharpened from diet and training, and battle hardened at the business end of his first season in the Premier League. Eric could feel the frisson of _something_ sparking around them, only for the tremor in Dele’s lips to betray him, as he cracked up, falling back against the manicured football practice field. “You win,” Dele’s laughter bubbled out. 

“I thought so,” Eric said triumphantly, as he shifted to his back, lying alongside Dele, as if they were at a beach in Barcelona instead of under greying skies at Enfield. The clouds just stood there- no wind to even move them along, or to coax them into shapes. “I thought you didn't care.”

_“Merde!”_

“Five - Nine, Coco,” Dele shouted out, before he turned to Eric, his dark eyes wide under long lashes. “Why wouldn’t I care?”

Eric scrubbed his face with his hands, before dragging his hands through his buzz cut. “You just- you just- I dunno. You just throw things off easier than I do at times.”

“We’re the youngest team in the league,” Dele said, “or so they keep saying. We’re going to make mistakes.”

“We don’t make the selection,” Eric said mutinously, “I know _why_ Pochettino did it but-”

“Yeah.”

“I wanted Europa,” Eric confessed, not caring how it sounded. “I know that in England it’s well-”

“Europa?”

“Europa,” Eric repeated, “But I wanted it, I wanted us to make a good fist of it after our last season, but-”

“Pochettino wants the title,” Dele finished, voice matter of fact. But then, Dele had always been clever in the ways that counted, which is one of the reasons why the gaffer rated him. 

“Pochettino wants the title,” Eric agreed, his fingers laced together, his hands resting on his stomach. The realisation no less stinging than yesterday, or this morning. “We can’t have both,” he said, before turning to face Dele again, a face that he knew as well as his own. Dele wrinkled his nose, and flashed a grin for a second at Eric, before it faded, and Eric pushed himself up, knowing what Dele had seen there. 

“Eric, you-”

“Fifteen to nine, Coco wins!” Josh said to Nabil’s audible huff of disgust. With a flourish, Coco gave an exaggerated courtly bow. 

Dele pushed himself to his feet, before doing a pantomime of a golf clap. 

“Okay, okay, I win now, yes?” Coco wiped at his gleaming forehead with his sleeve. 

“Fair and square,” Eric said. 

“Next time,” Nabil muttered, sounding like a cartoon villain who’d had his plans foiled, and was too busily plotting to be put out of sorts by his loss before long. “Next time,” he started to stalk off, before he caught himself, jogging to Coco and offered his hand out for a handshake. “Good game.”  
Coco smiled, too high off his latest victory to be bothered by Nabil’s actions.

***

After a quick shower, Eric hopped out, towel around his hips, kit bag in hand, as he headed towards his locker. He wasn’t surprised to see Dele there, tugging his hoodie over his head, his watch face the size of Big Ben- and oh, Eric only had two hours to go home before meeting up with Sonny and Kevin.

“You wanted both of them.”

Eric opened his locker, and yanked his crushed t-shirt and hoodie in one go. There was no noise save the faint trickle of water sluicing through drains. Dropping the towel around his ankles, because in organised sports, you got over nudity with your teammates quickly, Eric shrugged on his boxers and jeans. 

“Yeah, I did,” Eric said, his cheeks warm from the heat of the shower and slight embarrassment. “But I wanted Europa more. I wish Pochettino had given us the option.”

“Don’t be a misery guts,” Dele said in that easy way of his. “Listen, Diet-” and that was Dele, now throwing his arm across Eric’s shoulders, coconspirator in crime, their foreheads almost, but not quite touching. He smelt of something interesting and expensive that reminded Eric of jammy figs, the twang of citrus and... salt? “I’ll give you five minutes to mope-”

“Mope.” Eric repeated, half scornful. “As if you don’t want anything, as if you weren’t disappointed with his selections as well.”

“I’d want to play us Dortmund again,” Dele answered simply, his fingers automatically kneading Eric’s shoulder. Out of habit, Eric’s hand drifted to Dele’s and absently scratched at Dele’s knuckles. “I think we’d do better next time.”

When Dele said it like that, it made sense. The loss against Dortmund still stung, but embarrassment now giving way to acceptance. It was all a learning experience, a chastening one but still, disappointment was part and parcel of the game. You had to chalk it up to experience and move on. Just like Nabil and his insistence on two touch football. Losing stung but... mistakes were a part of the game

“Yeah,” Eric nodded, because well, it was true. They couldn't play any _worse_ anyway. “I think so too.”

_Fin_


End file.
